


Walked Before

by Avelin



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: (hopefully), Dream Flashbacks, Gen, Implied Relationships, Inspired by - the Shadowbringers Trailer, POV Multiple, POV Outsider, Peggy Sue Time Travel To Be Exact, The Echo, Time Travel, To Be Continued, Unreliable Exposition, implied mental health issues, mentions of injury
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-27
Updated: 2019-01-18
Packaged: 2019-09-01 10:15:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16763131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Avelin/pseuds/Avelin
Summary: Operation Archon was a resounding success. Now, in the aftermath of it, the strange phenomenon of the Warrior of Light's Echo taking on a seemingly autonomous life of its own is only the first mystery the Scions have to solve in this new age of ... all the old problems still being problematic.Bummer.





	1. Rebirth

**Author's Note:**

> Set right at the ending of 2.0 ... nominally. Also set right at the ending of 4.x.  
> May or may not be Jossed, once 4.5 actually comes out.
> 
> In any case - please enjoy o/

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> First, Minfilia has a vision, then she gets a linkshell call, then fears Bahamut may come back, and _then_ she realizes that ... no, the Dreadwyrm may not be their biggest problem, after all.

For once, the sky is clear over Silvertear Lake.

She has spent weeks here – encased in steel and industry, staring at metal floors which leeched the warmth out of her bones between beatings – but Minfilia relishes the scenery. The sunlight glints off the shores, fractures in the crystal landscape. Such beauty in this devastation.

The colourful banners of the Three Great Companies flutter in the breeze as their leaders proclaim,

“ _Ours is a Realm Reborn!_ ”

And the gathered soldiers cheer.

The Scions of the Seventh Dawn stand as part of the festivities, and apart, even now. And though they are less exuberant, less screaming with triumph and celebration, they are not less joyous. Thancred could come, wan and wild-eyed, but smiling – and this, truly, is a victory. Minfilia could not have wished for better. To think that she almost lost him …

But no.

This is a victory. A victory of _their making._ She ought to be proud.

Resolutely she squashes the nervous tingle in her heart at being so open. So openly _recognized._ She made that decision.

Operation Archon.

Its success was tremendous, and only possible thanks to the efforts of all who lend their swords and spells. And yet officers and privates and dignitaries (with their bodyguards) alike see their little band of scholars and say “Scion,” with a grave nod – and the respect is genuine. It runs deep. An acknowledgement.

No one else might ever know the loss at the Waking Sands, or the empty memories of the Calamity but –

The Seventh Astral Era is come.

Minfilia closes her eyes and turns her face towards the sun.

* * *

The Echo is a strange, queer little thing.

For everyone she has ever met with the gift, it manifests differently. Visions are the most common, she’s found, but then again – sometimes visions may be entirely absent. Sometimes it is just a feeling. Someone now long dead claimed it seemed to be music following her around, as if each place had a melody and a mood unique to itself. She had died at Cartenau. Minfilia wondered what music she’d heard then; she hopes it was a gentle song.

She herself … she has visions, sometimes, of things that have not yet happened. But they are rare. They lack context.

More often she hears a voice.

It’s not a voice she knows. It is not a voice she hears with her _ears._ Calling it a voice may be even a foolish thing to do – it’s not as if someone is speaking to her. Mostly it’s a narration. It gives words to feelings and understanding to thoughts. It makes it easy to talk to people because what they _say_ always is what she hears, for good or for ill. Even if they are not saying anything.

It lights up in her mind now. Knowledge she didn’t learn –

The voice is just a scream. And where her ears falter, her eyes brighten and suddenly she does have a _vision_.

Hydaelyn is the planet, but the planet is alive. The land has a soul that lies deep beneath the soil, the bedrock, the molten earth and she knows not what she sees but Hydaelyn is All Made One Crystal. Her brightness is the blue gleam of life. The sky, the ocean, rain watering the fields, all that She is. The sun, the candle flame, summer heat and the smell of spring flowers, all that She is. The wind, the rivers, the mountains, the seasons, all that She is. Human life and human death, human rebirth … all that She is.

But ink breaks into the water. Oil swallows the glimmer of light in Her Sea. The bright blue, all at once, is not anymore, and purple darkness shimmers where She was to be.

 _This_ is not all that She is.

Minfilia pants as she feels her soul crawl back into her bones and blood. She never is herself in a vision – body and soul two separate pieces of one person that bears her name and memories. And the return to be whole always is jarring. Though it has never been this jarring before. She feels faint and dizzy.

Absently, she reaches out to steady herself. Urianger catches her elbow with gentle fingers.

“My Lady?” he asks lowly. Worry makes his voice dark.

“’tis nothing.” she deflects. But she’s blinking. Her eyes are too dry. Some nameless fear claws at the back of her throat.

The voice is still screaming. Not a flash of insight, this time, just a background noise that is slow to fade. It unnerves her intensely.

That, too, is unusual.

But before she can elaborate – all of the Scions know the Echo, know that she has it, and a _vision_ is important – the Warrior of Light collapses, twitching and clutching his head in agony. His eyes are far, far away in a vision of his own.

He has a name. Of course he does.

But when she asked him, he’d hesitated. Not – as one would assume – out of wariness. He isn’t wary about people. She knew that immediately.

Minfilia … that meeting with him was the first she’d ever seen him. And also not.

She’d known him, long long ago. Before the Calamity. Before her father died, even.

T’was through the Echo, of course, that she met the quiet adventurer who was blessed as she was. Who didn’t even realize it – realize that his frequent blackouts and headaches, the knowledge of events he could never have been there for, were signs of a supernatural power no one understood at that time … and truthfully they still don’t. He had been there, at the periphery of the worst moments of her childhood.

Walkers of the Path of the Twelve. He’d walked this path with her, with so many others. He and his company, who died at Cartenau.

They’d stood against the primals, back then. And when the Sixth Astral Era was ending, when the void broke through the thinning walls of reality, when the false moon Dalamud descended in a red apocalypse, they’d stood against the madness.

The Calamity came. The Cartenau Flats were just the first to burn.

Some of the bodies could never be identified. Some very, very few survived.

Some of those could do so only by forgetting.

The adventurer she’d known all but certainly perished in the flames. And then, years later, Thancred sent a report of a young man he met in Ul’dah.

Quiet and attentive, kind in his actions. Good fighter. Stoic but palpably confused. Blackouts and headaches, possessed of a knowledge of events he could never have been there for. “Handsome, too. I’d dare say you would like to meet him.” her brother had written, teasingly.

The man who she met then was the same. Was not the same.

He was entirely the person who she remembered. The body, the mannerisms were an exact match.

But his eyes were emptier. His face was blank. His soul was almost unbearably _calm._

He was younger than her, and younger than he should be if he truly were the same person.

But the man had looked up, and his voice had been quietly raw, so heartbreakingly _unsure_ , when he answered her question:

_I am Aster._

And the name … fit.

Not that anyone will use it, now. Not after all and sundry heard him be proclaimed the Warrior of Light, Champion of Eorzea.

Minfilia blinks away the past. The voice has ceased narrating.

In the blink of her Echo vision, Yda, Y’shtola and Papalymo have hurried to the Warrior’s side. But he, too, is coming back to himself. His eyes are still far away, lost in thought, but he gets to his hands and knees without much shaking. The Archons don’t fuss over him. He doesn’t offer what he saw.

Before she can ask –

A tap in her ear distracts her: aether pokes at her eardrum, and with a confused frown Minfilia turns away from Urianger’s careful hands to accept the linkshell call.

“Yes? Is all well, Tataru?” she asks. Her brain is crawling, a feeling that expands out to her spine and down her legs.

“ _I don’t know!_ ” Tataru near-shrieks into her ear. Her voice pitches high in agitation. “ _Something’s happened to Aster! And I don’t know, he’s not waking up! And nobody is here except me, but I’m_ not _equipped to deal with this._ ”

Minfilia blinks.

She looks back at her friends and comrades and finds the man in question shaking his head. Papalymo gestures placatingly at some worriedly on looking soldiers.

“But Aster is here.” she says, confused.

The Warrior’s focus snaps onto her. His stare is intense.

“ _No. He’s not.”_ Tataru refutes immediately, utterly sure.

“I am looking right at him.” And Minfilia is not one to doubt, and especially she’s not one to doubt Tataru, but what is going on here?

There’s silence from the other end of the linkpearl.

Then Tataru’s voice is filled with a strange fear.

“ _Then who am **I** looking at now?_” she asks.

“Minfilia?” Thancred says quietly, leaning as far forward as he can without falling out of his seat. It must strain his injuries, but, as always, he doesn’t let any of the pain show. “Minfilia … –Antecedent, what is going on?”

She shakes herself back into the world. She’s their leader, she needs to –

Needs to have answers. But she doesn’t even know the question to ask.

The Warrior begins to hover and aetherial streams swirl around him. A teleport spell, she realizes, very probably straight to Horizon.

But then, just to add onto the pile, a world-shaking, ear-shattering _roar_ echoes over the Mor Dhona landscape so loudly she and everyone else cowers away with hands over their ears in an effort to protect their hearing. It’s of little use. It roars and screeches, echoes down into their very bones again. Everyone here knows that roar, the Dreadwyrm’s roar. For one horrible, eternal second, Minfilia sees the sky aflame again; the night was as day, five years ago, so vast was Bahamut’s rage.

Fear breaks out in the crowd.

The Flame General is calling for his officers, trying to get answers. Admiral Bloefhiswyn calls her marines to her, barking orders swiftly and surely. The activity helps, a bit. On the side lines, the few civilian dignitaries who attended the victory celebration are quickly ushered away back to Revenant’s Toll.

Then a Flame runner barrels through the crowd.

_“A primal … a primal has awakened!_ ”

“Oh no.” Minfilia breathes.

A primal is … it’s the Scions’ responsibility. They just won this victory, but … that roar. Her hands are shaking with the fiery memory. She cannot stop thinking of the losses. The smoke. The ruins.

Aster has halted his teleportation, but he’s tense all over. His face is blank, though she can feel the question hover at the tip of his tongue.

_What to do?_

Right. This is their responsibility, and now, everyone in Eorzea even knows it. She puts the nightmare back into the box it broke out of. Time to live up to her decisions.

“Aster, go back to the Waking Sands” she nods at him. “See what happened there.”

It’s not like he’d be able to fight what he cannot even see yet, anyway. And he wants little, but she knows he wants to do this. He nods back.

“Y’shtola, Papalymo, please find me some aetherial readings. We need to know who or what this primal is. Or where it is.”

The Archons nod and stride off, just as tense. But ready. They’re used to one crisis after the other.

Minfilia breathes deep.

Aster has already vanished.

“Thancred, I want you to stay here. _Do not_ do anything physically strenuous, but please see what aid the Companies may need from us.” She hesitates, and locks eyes with the man she calls brother. Never to his face, though, and she wonders for a moment if she should start. “Be careful.”

Thancred grins crookedly at her. “As ever, my dear, your concern is well appreciated. I may need some help getting around, though.” he says as lightly as he possibly can. Immediately Yda is at his side and fussing over him in her particular way.

“I’ll carry you!” she says and Thancred shrinks away from her exuberance with an awkward laugh.

“Please _don’t_.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t drop you this time.”

Assured of the pair’s arrangements, Minfilia turns to find Urianger and Alphinaud look at her.

“Antecedent –“ the boy starts, and she nods at him.

“Please head back to the Waking Sands as well.” she interrupts his no doubt verbose offer of help. “Aster and Tataru may have need of your help, and Urianger – see if you can find any references to a god, or primal that may be draconic but not Bahamut. We need to know exactly what we are dealing with, and jumping to conclusions without fact will avail us naught.”

“But … the primal?” Alphinaud protests.

“Worry not.” she says with a smile. “I will confer with the Leaders of the Grand Companies. We _will_ deal with this. Go now; I will follow you to Vesper Bay anon.”

It’s a short conversation she has with General Aldynn, Admiral Bloefhiswyn and the Elder Seedseer; one she has to have, if only for appearances’ sake. All they do is reaffirm that the Scions will spearhead the brunt of the investigation – and, thanks to the Warrior of Light’s presence, even the fight. No one wants to throw entire regiments at a primal if a better alternative is present.

Minfilia smiles and agrees. Inwardly she frowns with worry.

She directs them to Thancred and Yda for any following questions, and then excuses herself from the Leaders’ presence. One problem addressed, the other still to follow through. With a sigh she gathers her aether and prepares to teleport for the second time in as many days. Horizon is not too far, thankfully, so she doesn’t even stumble as she rematerializes under the hot Thanalan sun. But her legs are shaky as she goes to sit on a bench, and suddenly she’s _ravenous._ A kind merchant offers her a snack for a gil discount.

He’s shrewd. It’s easy money.

Minfilia smiles and buys two hot buns. Then she goes to buy passage with a Chocobo Porter, and soon enough she is on her way back home.

What she finds there is … not what she expected.

The Waking Sands is all but deserted still. Those who survived the raid tend to not linger in these halls if not necessary – as the smell lingers. Blood iron and gunpowder heat, the faintest taint of dark magics that threads through the air, into her lungs. Minfilia hesitates at the cellar doorway. An acknowledgement.

What has happened can never unhappen.

She strides forward.

Light is flickering in the solar. With an assessing look she takes in the room.

Alphinaud is pacing and only greets her with a nod. The thick carpet swallows the sound of his agitation. Tataru is absent. Off to the side, Urianger doesn’t even notice her – hand near his mouth and posture pensive, his head is bowed deep in thought. Not a book in sight, but his sight is fixed on –

“Ah.” she says.

Aster.

And the doppelganger he kneels in front of.

The Echo is a strange, queer little thing.

Sometimes, for her, it’s a vision. Most of the times, for her, it’s a voice without soul giving word to concepts. There is a physicality to these things no one can grasp in their hands alone, as long as she can name them.

But sometimes, the voice is Hydaelyn’s. And Hydaelyn is always, _always_ the worst to hear.

_Oh, my dear children._

Minfilia’s footsteps are swallowed by the thick carpet.

The Voice is quiet, far away. She can barely hear the Mothercrystal, can barely feel Her presence and Her weakness trembles in Minfilia’s veins, an echo of frailty. The shatter point approaches. But every sound else is muted. Silence reigns, and her soul flails alone in the empty sea. The sorrow steals all else away.

The exact same man. Body, skin colour, face.

Aster kneels, and though he looks awake and there’s tension in his body, emotion on his face – his eyes are empty. His mind has gone astray. Slumped against the wall, the other man is bonelessly unconscious. She cannot tell if he is even breathing. If either of them is even breathing. Minfilia turns to her companions and through the drone of the Echo, she reads off of Alphinaud’s lips:

‘When we arrived, he already was here and unresponsive like this. Neither has moved, beyond Tataru manhandling our mysterious stranger to the side –’

She looks back at the pair, and frowns. Something about this doesn’t seem …

 _Not_ not right. Just unusual. Out of the known, as much as can be known about this. And then she realizes.

The Warrior does not touch people. She knows that.

He stands, at all times, at least a foot apart from everyone else, turns his attention to sounds and gestures and with it his entire body. He greets with a wave and a smile and never clasps hands. She hasn’t seen him fighting, but she has also never seen him _not_ fighting. Even now, he is wearing the armour he wore on the strike mission into the Praetorium.

And Minfilia knows better than most, that, when the Echo sounds, all else falls away. When the soul goes on wanderings, the body left behind is still.

But Aster’s hand rests on the other man’s ankle. Long fingers curve lightly around the bone. It is almost gentle.

And wonderingly, his thumb moves in a soothing caress. A reassurance. Neither can feel it through leather gauntlet and metal greaves.

Her own movement feels like molasses surround her skin as she crouches down next to the pair. She is not herself. She is not _herself._

Hydaelyn’s grief washes over her.

Minfilia looks up.

The other man’s eyes open, half-lidded and dazed.

The exact same eye colour too, shadowed with pain and life.

He turns his head, a motion so small she imagines it half. But he looks at her, and his face is pale with agony, pale with sickness soul deep, pale with grief –

 _Hydaelyn’s_ grief _drowns_ her, and She has to –

say –

_“Oh my dear, beloved child. I pray …”_

“Minfilia…?” the man breathes.

_“Pray, forgive me–“_

And then Minfilia chokes on the words. The Mothercrystal laments: an emotion so vast, so intense, so keeningly threaded through the world soul there can never be a description for it.

Tears she cannot cry blur her vision and the man’s voice is the clearest, realest thing in the clamour of the Echo she has ever experienced. Purple is streaked through the blue of his tired eyes. It takes endless moments, the look he gives her – so searching and wondering. Confusion. Quiet and attentive, and warm with a kindness that is born from choice; a kindness that gives until only exhaustion remains. And still… distant and guarded. Stoic. Unsure under the perfect certainty of his character. His face is blank, and his soul feels unbearably _calm._ There is emotion on Aster’s face as he echoes his twin, and it is horror.

Eventually Minfilia’s soul settles back into her flesh. Nothing jars, nothing hurts. Reality refirms itself around her. It feels like homecoming.

Hydaelyn’s presence grows quiet, quieter … and then is gone.

The Warriors of Light remain.

“Antecedent?”

“ _Antecedent!”_

Minfilia stands up and turns to her friends. Comrades. Family. She blinks heavily, agitated in a way the Echo rarely leaves her. She doesn’t know what to feel, of all the myriad things she is feeling.

Alphinaud, bless his young heart, peers at her in uncharacteristic, anxious intensity. His eyes search her face, but he doesn’t know what he ought to search for, or what he ought to find, so Minfilia makes sure only reassurance is there to see. It is not difficult – not difficult at all. She has learned how to be sure for others in the face of uncertainty long ago now.

Urianger is less easy to placate. But he is also less inclined to push and prod and dissect if the time is not proper for it. He frowns at her, but doesn’t say anything.

Tataru looks up at her with open worry. In her hands she holds a basket filled with first aid supplies. When she arrived, Minfilia cannot say. She startles to see Y’shtola and Papalymo, too, standing just beside Urianger. They wait with patient curiosity for her Echo to quiet.

Minfilia closes her eyes and breathes deep. Too slowly the tumult in her breast quiets.

What a curious problem they have on hand here. But at least this is not a calamitous primal; anything else can be solved.

She smiles. “Welcome back.” she greets. If in doubt, default to politeness.

“It appears our friend has a … previously unknown brother.” Y’shtola observes with an arched eyebrow. Her bright eyes flicker over the pair in the corner. “A _twin_ brother.”

Her scepticism is clear.

Minfilia’s smile edges into awkwardness.

“Ah. I fear it is a little more complicated than that.” she admits and looks back at them too. The other man watches them silently. Much like Aster tends to do. Exactly like Aster tends to do.

Hesitantly, Tataru steps forward and puts her supplies down. “Well. At least you’re awake now!” she says to him with a brightness that is only half forced. The man looks at her and something in his face gentles. He nods. “I was afraid you’re injured. _Are_ you injured?” The man shakes his head, and she sighs in relief. Then she looks at the Warrior and her smile falls again. “What is happening to Aster?”

Aster, who has not moved at all. Only his eyes dart back and forth, watching something intangible.

Unexpectedly – it is the man who answers her. Minfilia is so surprised she gawps at him for a disgraceful moment.

“He echoes.” he tells Tataru quietly. Then he looks back at his mirror image, fatigue writ into every line of his body. “Though what he sees, I do not know.”

His voice is clear and steady, if hoarse. Quiet by nature, and a bit raw from rust and disuse.

It’s Aster’s voice.

None of the Scions miss that. How could they? He speaks decidedly less than he listens – when he does, one cannot help but be startled into paying attention.

“If I may.” Urianger speaks up into the narrow-eyed surprise. “I would enquire thy name, my friend. And how thou came to be here, of all spaces.”

And that is the grand question, is it not?

It’s Aster’s voice and Aster’s face, Aster’s body and skin colour and mannerisms. The same way to smile. The same inclination to observe before acting.

Identical men do not just appear out of thin air.

Minfilia … knows the answer. But she knows it like she knows the voice of Hydaelyn – barely; instinctual. She does not know how to put it into _words._

The man does not answer for a long moment. He looks so tired.

He closes his eyes wearily.

“I am Aster.” he says with utter certainty. “Tupsimati drew me here.”

All eyes look upon the staff sealed above her desk.

Tupsimati – Archon Louisoix’s staff; famed for its aetherial power. For its ability to draw and siphon vast quantities of it, beyond a single mortal’s ability. It was broken at the Cartenau Flats, as Louisoix sought to summon the Twelve in a bid to forestall the Calamity. He failed.

The staff is the only thing left of him that they could recover. Only ashes remain of the man.

Minfilia frowns.

Papalymo strides forward. “And, pray tell, how did it do that?” he asks, almost scowling. It’s his thinking face. “It draws aether, correct, but that draw should not have any effect on aetheryte travel. The streams flow to it, but without focus a teleportation route is too strong to be caught in it. It would flow back onto the correct trajectory. Unless…”

Y’shtola picks up the thread of the conversation.

“His name is Aster.” she says. “And yet, Aster is already here. Do you _not_ find that the stranger of the two?”

“’tis unprecedented, sure.” Alphinaud muses, eyes sharp on the Warrior of Light. “But not unthinkable. There _is_ the concern of aetherial reconstruction after journeying. It is the sole reason beacons are so important, after all, without which we –”

Scholars and learned people all, the Scions fall into musings of physics and aetherology. Minfilia scarcely finds a pause to politely break into their discussion. “That is not it at all.” she at last says firmly, and the Archons fall silent. As does Alphinaud, his finger still raised to demonstrate his point.

“Antecedent?” Alphinaud asks puzzled.

“It is not a teleportation accident. I can say that with absolute certainty.” she says. “ _How_ I can say that might … sound like a jest to you, however, so I bid you – pray, keep an open mind.”

“Eon and instant.” Urianger says unexpectedly. He’s been silent so far in his corner of the room, staring at the pair of Warriors. “The basis upon which all preternatural knowledge is borne. Knowledge such as the Echo giveth you, my lady, and giveth the others so blessed by the Mothercrystal.” He pauses. “And young Aster – he is _still_ experiencing a vision. The same one, even. Forgive me mine presumption, but he walketh in thy soul, Master Aster, doth he not?”

Everyone turns back to the man in question. He nods.

“Why would this be?” Alphinaud muses. “I have not personally witnessed him experience the Echo before, true, but from Thancred’s report I was under the impression the visions were short, powerful bursts that – coupled with his aetherial sensitivity – led to blackouts and disorientation. Not catatonia. Certainly nothing that persists for the better part of an hour.”

It occurs to Minfilia –

She knows her own Echo. She knows Arenvald’s Echo. Knew Una’s Echo, and that of Percevains, of Satzfloh, of Leuvianne, of so many others. Visions and feelings, music and the melody of places.

She does not know what form the Echo takes for the Warrior of Light.

Only that it hurts.

“This is an error.” Aster says. There is a wound threaded faintly through his voice. “I was not intending to be here.”

He says it quietly, only to his twin image. It is, almost, an apology without so many words.

_Tupsimati drew me here._

But Tupsimati only draws aether. Aster’s Echo visions are short, not trances. Minfilia feels so many things, instinctual knowledge she gleaned from the Echo, that she cannot untangle the knot of sorrow and guilt and determination surrounding the man. No single word encapsules the concept that led him here. She cannot name it – the drive, the despair, the experience of disregarding self in order to burn clear past mistakes. Only to find – the vision is yourself.

She can only understand it, and feel her heart bleeding for it.

Eon and instant, an expanse that contracts into one single point of _All_. It is _so clear._

And it is in this moment that the Warrior of Light breathes sharply in.

That his hand lifts from his mirror’s ankle.

That he wakes from his vision … and recoils from reality.

“Welcome back to the land of the waking.” Minfilia says, and smiles at him. She does not want him to see her frowning right now.

It is _so clear._

The Warrior of Light stares at her in something like wonderment. Like staring at a ghost. His head snaps around at the sound of cloth rustled in moving, and then he stares at Papalymo. At Urianger and Y’shtola and, longest, at Alphinaud.

“Well?” Papalymo peers at him. “You were gone for quite some time. May we know what kept you?”

The Warrior goes back to staring at the lalafellin scholar. He opens his mouth, but though his lips form the beginnings of a word, he doesn’t manage to say anything. His face crumples, alarmingly, into regret.

The Aster still leaning against the wall pokes him with his foot. It’s a short, comfortable, casual gesture – and so _alien_ from the Aster they know, that the Scions cannot help but stare. The Warrior looks at his counterpart, and … the wildness in his eyes calms. Whatever disorientation he experienced after returning to physical space settles back into certainty. They don’t say anything to each other, just silently look, but even so Minfilia has the distinct impression that there is an understanding forming.

It is _so clear_ , and only becomes clearer the longer she watches them.

Identical men do not just appear out of thin air. But Tupsimati draws aether, and what is an Echo vision but one aetherial soul speaking to another?

She does not rightly know what form his Echo takes, but she can certainly guess.

“Aster?” she inquires. “May I?”

They turn to her with identical motions. They nod at the same time.

Eerie.

Minfilia squares her shoulders. “I believe” she begins, “the answer to the mystery lies in Aster’s Echo. Correct me if I guessed wrong, but yours may take the form of precognition.”

They do not correct her.

She turns to the gathered Scions. Yda and Thancred are missing, but she would just have to fill them in later.

“And the Echo, in essence, is aetherial communication between souls. Now. What I believe has happened is that … through an unexpected reaction with Tupsimati’s enchantments, the vision Aster was to experience from, uh, his future self, was waylaid, and drawn here instead.”

There is a beat of silence.

A long beat of silence.

Minfilia waits.

“Future self.” Alphinaud repeats, at last. “Forgive me, Antecedent, but that sounds … fantastical.”

“I am well aware.” she says with a sheepish smile.

“Maybe not so fantastical.” Y’shtola muses thoughtfully. “Urianger, what was it you said – eon and instant? I recognize this phrase, though I cannot remember where from.”

The elezen nods. “Precisely. ‘Tis oft repeated in antique invocations of Althyk, He Who Keeps Time. Though its association to the font of all knowledge doth remain more obscure, scholars may, though almost exclusively, find mention of it in that collection of ancient prophecies – The Chronicles of Mezaya Thousand-Eye. ‘Tis there that I learned of it first.”

“So. What.” Tataru asks baffled and turns to the two men next to her. “You actually, really are from the future?”

He is.

What a curious problem they have. Scholars and learned people all, a time traveller is _not_ something the Archons have any knowledge of. The novelty of it has them all quite flustered. Especially Yda, once she learns of it – though she seems more taken by the notion of the possibilities it entails.

(“Do I win the Little Ladies Day Festivities? I always wanted to win at the dress-up portion.” she asks of the Aster from the future eagerly. Papalymo scoffs and scolds her for the inanity, but Minfilia can see why she did it. For a moment the solemnity on the Warriors’ faces lightens into fond amusement. They nod.)

Minfilia, perhaps, understands the gravity of it more than they do. But then again, she only does because of cheating.

Aster did not intent to travel physically, that much is clear. But he never refutes the assumption that he did intend to at least send a vision into the past, to be experienced as a precognition.

A warning.

And a warning that needs to be sent across time, space, the barriers of souls … she does not look forward to hearing what it entails.

* * *

As it usually is, the night sky is star studded over Vesper Bay. A gentle, salty breeze wavers into the settlement from the harbour.

She has spent years here – hiding in the cellar of a warehouse, trying to avoid attention on her and hers, though ultimately that had been futile – but for Minfilia the view of the ocean still is as soothing as the first time she saw it. The lamplight glints off the waves as much as it illuminates the cobblestones she walks over. A quiet comfort. A piece of home.

The Scions of the Seventh Dawn will have to leave, now that they are realm renowned.

It was her decision to step out of obscurity, but even so the necessity sits unwell with her. They cannot stay in Thanalan – Ul’dah’s sovereign territory.

So many things have changed.

So many things they did, so many things they still have to do. One victory is nothing in a string of unending fights – for freedom, for peace, for rebirth, for the people, for hope. For the dawn to come. There is no rest for the weary that care.

But that is in the future. A future that may hold anguish, and devastation, that may bring Bahamut’s rebirth and worse things, who can say – but one which they can fight. Minfilia knows they can.

For now, she walks the piers and lets the quiet resonate in her heart.

And at the end she chances upon an unlikely pair: sitting next to each other, shoulder to shoulder and closer than he ever is to any person, are Aster and his future self.

She supposes it is a strange sensation, to be one soul in two bodies.

“I wonder.” she says lightly when they notice her. They welcome her with identical smiles. “Now that there are two of you… which one is the Warrior of Light?”

It is the wrong question to ask.

Heavy silence sinks down between them. The man from the future stares at his knees.

“I am”

Aster’s quiet voice is grave. He does not look at her. The only sound filling the night is the sound of the sea, the waves unbothered.

Minfilia turns her eyes to the full moon, and sighs.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Psst. Reviews would be very welcome! Even - especially - with critisism._


	2. Heartbeat Without Harmony

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Flashback Episodes in a second chapter? More likely than you think!  
> (But really, Fordola was a little off the mark, when she said _unbroken._ )

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apparently this is now More-than-a-Oneshot.

* * *

He kneels in front of the stone, engraved with the sun disk of Azeyma, the Warden. The air smells richly - of spices and rain and the bloom of desert flowers.

Swollen high after the recent thunderstorms, the roar of the Burning Wall’s waters thunders into the chasm’s depths. It is powerful, despite the distance. Just as the sun is scorching the land dry again, just as the shiver shakes his spine. He feels cold, even though the heat is burning his skin red. He kneels in the flaky dirt, and his hands are _steady_ as he clasps them in front of his face. Somewhere overhead a solitary hawk screeches, shrill and piercing.

He prays, but should he pray for retribution, as the priestess bid him? Azeyma would grant that just vengeance, she had been sure. But should he not rather pray to Nald’Thal? Or to the Wanderer, so that the lost souls might find their path to rest? He does not know. The gods are silent.

Everything is silent.

All the better for him to hear the gunshots again. To hear the squelch of his boots on the blood soaked carpet again. To hear Noraxia’s laboured last breaths again.

He breathes, and hears that too.

He breathes the damp and the chill, the staleness of underground air. The tang of metal sits heavy on his tongue. Coldly nauseous, the back of his throat stings with the taste of the surrounding ceruleum and processed aether. It feels alive. But a life that teeters on the last seconds of burning out, like a furnace stoked to too high a temperature. A fever. A brilliant, _brilliant_ flare. The Echo beats against his temples.

Blurs in his vision. Shades and red flashes, after-images that never will be.

He stumbles, disoriented. Unsteady. Lightning crackles in the darkness, before that, too, cuts away.

When the lights go back on, with a snap and a clack, the tribunus is gone and the path clear.

They have no choice but to go. They go.

Six of eight still alive. That is enough. That _has_ to be enough.

It almost is not.

The Black Wolf is a formidable foe, and his attacks relentless. He moves with speed enhanced by magitek, and his bullets strike true. He sees – split second, clear and vanished – the aim of the barrel, the path of the bullet; feels – split second, hot and wet and then unblemished – the spray of his blood as the gunblade tears through his neck. He dodges, last second, and the Wolf shoots again. Again. Again.

Ceruleum burns away at the metal of the floor, acrid and toxic in the ever colder air. His lungs are seizing. Five of eight make it out of that fight alive, and they follow the arrogant invitation into the heart of the Praetorium.

The Ultima Weapon.

He has to charge. Has to challenge. _Must_ ride the high of adrenaline, he knows, because he can feel emptiness encroaching already, and without this focus he’ll sink to the floor, useless and spent. A failure. This is why they are here. _This is why they are here._

Destroy the Ultima Weapon.

Destroy and kill, send each of its myriad parts into a different corner of all seven hells.

And it’s – not difficult. Much less than he thought. Divinity swells around him, Mother’s voice so bright and clear. It is as a warm shield against the metal chill, against the magic dripping like oil into reality –

Until Lahabrea unleashes Ultima, and then there is nothing _but_ Light.

Ultima Weapon remains operational. As does he, weapon in hand and suddenly, inexplicably _exhausted_. Not of aether, not of body or mind. Something glints in the air around him – a shield? he will never be sure – before it fades, and something else in his very soul feels _broken_ as it does. It is Lahabrea, the Ascian, who says – with Thancred’s voice, with Thancred’s smirk, _in Thancred’s body –_ what happened, but he can’t … can’t understand –

The Praetorium burns.

Ultima rips a crater of devastation into the land half again as big as the fortress they’re standing in.

It implodes and crumbles around them as Gaius van Baelsar refuses to admit defeat against mere savages like them.

Five of eight. Then four.

Three, as a falling airship crashes into their battlefield and crushes –

He gets thrown away by an explosive ball of corrosive aether and tastes only fire and ash. The gigantic claw that ripped Ifrit apart descends on him. A hard shove and then two of eight, because for some reason the others think –

Lahabrea becomes impatient and suddenly the Ultima Weapon is still _._ Still and _charging_ , and he wants to retch with horror because the Echo is screaming in his mind, Hydaelyn is gone, his team is _dead,_ everyone is _dead or dying_ and _this is why they are here_ , they’re here to kill the threat against Eorzea but he is failing, he is _failing_ ; the Weapon is not alive and you cannot kill that which is eternal.

He realizes –

There was a caveat to this. To all of this.

He doesn’t know how he stops this second cast of Ultima. He doesn’t know how the Weapon goes from upright to a trash heap on the ground, and van Baelsar crawling pathetically out of the wreckage, leaking blood and trailing ceruleum. Truthfully, he doesn’t even really notice the Black Wolf surviving.

His hands are bleeding. A deafening noise in his mind drones out all sound.

And there stands Lahabrea, immortally condescending, come to insult van Baelsar, to curse the Mothercrystal in the very next breath. There he stands – blaspheming with Thancred’s voice, mocking with Thancred’s smirk, parading around in Thancred’s body as if everything about any of this weren’t violating; he wants to rip the Ascian apart with his bare hands. Horror transforms into fury. The inferno all around dries the tears into salt tracks on his cheeks –

There stands Lahabrea, torn and battered, ripped out of the symbiosis and disbelieving, fearful. There he stands in the face of the deiform he thought was his to manipulate. Here he fails and breaks. A choir of thousand year old prayers swallows his dying screams.

Then, crystallizing out of the miasma, sharp and over-real:

“Go!” he hears through the din of fire. “Take th’ Archon and soddin’ _go,_ lad!”

He’s shaking his head, he remembers that. He’s shaking all over, and out into the other reality.

Wreckage and ruin. The stench of burning metal, melting stone. So much _noise._

His hands are bloody. Bleeding – but no, he is wearing gauntlets, isn’t he. He is.

He looks up. The fire is encroaching rapidly. It devours the ground.

The Weapon is already glowing white-hot, its fuselages liquefying. Smoke crawls through the heavy air, and the Ascian’s black robes blend into the scorched earth where Thancred’s body fell. Only Thancred’s body – the Echo is silent, and the Ascian gone.

“Go, gods damn ye!” he hears again, and looks back at the master of his Free Company. The roegadyn is … is scowling at him, through the agony of his crushed legs. He cannot run, anymore. Ultima Weapon trampled all over him.

Aster cannot focus on his face. He doesn’t remember his face.

He remembers Daniklet’s hands around his head though, and the gentle way the man tugs him forward. Forehead to forehead, he is still against Aster’s shaking – dignified with the certainty of death.

“You _have_ to go. Now.” he says, in pitch-perfect Standard Eorzean. “At least one of us should survive this mission.”

And he knew. He knew from the beginning what Aster asked of them. What the Grand Companies needed of them. He needs to –

_I am sorry. I am sorry. I am sorry. Please please please…_

“Show ‘em our victory, lad. _Go._ ”

Aster goes.

The mission: Go find the Ultima Weapon at the heart of the Praetorium and destroy it.

The caveat: no extraction for the strike team.

Aster knew, on an unthought level, the risk. He is used to this risk. But not everyone is, and he should never, _never_ have demanded it of the others. Of the eight who entered Castrum Meridianum, only one leaves the Praetorium alive.

How he survives, he does not know, either. The next he recognizes is the coolness of air that is not burning against his face, and the joyous humming of the magitek reaper beneath his hands. Behind him, Thancred is softly breathing. People are approaching, jubilant and unscorched. The Scions and Cid and the Companies’ leaders crowd around him and congratulate him and celebrate him – but more importantly the victory he is living proof of. Everyone is so glad he brought back Thancred, they forget to ask what happened in the Praetorium.

It’s the first time they call him Warrior of Light.

* * *

The Warrior opens his eyes slowly. Sand crusts on his skin and in the folds of his armour.

The sun over the Sagolii is bitingly, blisteringly merciless. Through half-lidded eyes he watches the glare of sunlight on the endless shifting dunes, swayed forth and back to the beat of tired footsteps sinking into the ground. He turns his head, a lazy motion in the heat, and feels an answering nod. Forehead to temple, he smells ash and soot. His other self’s back is warm. Malms behind them, the Bowl of Embers lies empty once more and the canyons of Zahar’ak are lined with corpses.

No wonder he dreamt of flames.

He sinks back into sleep.

* * *

When he at last sees her, the Lady Iceheart, she walks with the ethereality of gentle snowfall. He is as a sleep-walker in her presence.

All warmth has left her skin. All luster has left her hair, and all emotion her eyes. She is his enemy, she will summon a primal – it’s in her footsteps, in her voice, her utter conviction – and still he cannot raise his weapon for a strike. She steps past him. He lets her.

It has been a while since he felt the Echo so _quietly._

He does not have a vision, and there is no shearing pain cutting him away from reality. But he recognizes this feeling. Body and soul come together and split apart from the whole. His body is still, and hers is moving. The whispers of her soul drown out the groaning of the ice all around them. Neither of them feels the cold like most people do.

He tries to listen, but he is not Minfilia to whom understanding comes so easily. He hears only Iceheart’s words, and the mourning underneath them.

Her name is Isayle.

Her name is Isayle the same way the Warrior's own name is Aster. It’s not who she _is._

Who she is, she doesn’t even know herself. She sinks into the ice and the ritual and the salvation of her own hands, and her flesh turns to aether. He feels her soul fold into itself and fold outside again, it breaks and mends and twists. The Doman children showed him a paper figurine, once – crude they called it, but proudly – and that is what Iceheart does to her own soul. She doesn’t want to _be_. So she takes the core of herself and shapes it into the scripture of heretical myth.

Breathtaking.

And frail.

Saint Shiva is beautiful.

She is beautiful in the same way a snowstorm may be beautiful, and the howling of a blizzard in the middle of the night. The overwhelming moment where all you see is white, where all you feel is the sting of ice on your skin, in your lungs, and realize how small you truly are. How insignificant one life is against the vastness of the world. And it hurts. It _hurts_ to realize this.

But one life is still enough for _change._

Iceheart knows how to fight. To plan and ambush and harass with no losses for her. Her operations were like an avalance upon the Ishgardians – harmless, until deadly. Minor, until the entire mountain descends. Her band of heretics are not killers, but they kill for her. Blood steeps the ground where she leaves footsteps in the snow.

She is _smart._

And so, Saint Shiva is merciless.

She aims for the weak points in his armor – arm pits, joints, neck; his wounds burn against the utter zero of the battlefield. She turns the ground to ice to deny him sure footing, and encircles them with primal frost so he cannot climb the steps of the amphitheatre to gain height against her. She bombards him with icicles, freezes him solid, shatters the world around him. Ice is the element of strength, and her force is nearly overwhelming.

She floats above him out of reach, forever too far and he cannot catch her when she falls, cannot save her, _cannot move_. She molds golems out of the frozen ground, twice as tall as he, fathomless, soulless, bigger, armoured. Over him, surrounding him. Laughter. They take his weapons. They take his movement. He tries to – But they don’t listen. They know. ( _They knew!_ ) They know and they don’t care and he cannot move cannot move cannot _move_ –

Iron scrapes his wrists raw. He cannot move. He cannot move, he cannot scream. Wine soaks into the ground, the carpet. The squelch of his boots on the … on the –

Blood ( _soaked carpet, gunpowder heat_ ). The Sultana collapses, chokes. Blood soaks … wine soaks into the ground and her eyes – so wide, so unseeing; her crown lies unbroken near the doorway. He cannot scream and cannot move and fire burns in his muscles, alien and wrong as if he has a seizure but he’s not exhausted is he, he is not he didn’t fight he didn’t move he –!

She … she isn’t breathing. _She isn’t –_

No one else in the room.

No one else in the room but him.

Iceheart tells him: _“You fight in wars you do not understand.”_

She says: _“You should never have come here!”_

… pleads with him: _“Do not_ squander _Mother’s gift.”_

But Mother is not speaking to him anymore.

Mother is silent and Mother is gone and all he can do is try not to drown when fate drags him under the sea, merciless.

They shove and drag him through the palace halls.

Iron scrapes his wrists raw.

Nobles stop and stare as the Crystal Braves with their captive storm past on their way to the Fragrant Chamber. The excited whispers follow him; they scrape over his skin with scaly wingbeats. Gossip moths. Void spiders and their webs tangle around him. He trips, they jerk him back on his feet. His entire body hurts, but most of all his head. He cannot focus his eyes. His vision swims in a wavy gloom of smears, of shades and blood red lightning flashes. A thin coating of conjury keeps the bruises from forming on his face – a small mercy he shouldn’t be so pathetically _grateful_ for. He doesn’t want to look like a vict–

Teledji Adeledji throws the entrance doors wide open.

Words and words and words. Accusations. Minfilia’s voice, high and afraid.

Ilberd throws him into the full banquet hall to be stared at by the rich and indolent, the scandalized.

He cannot move, cannot catch his fall. Hushed silence. He bites back a pained scream, but surely everyone already heard.

The weakness. The humiliation. _His._

But they want him to look like an assassin they just caught, and they fucking succeed.

The Sultana is murdered and the General absolutely looses it.

Raubahn cleaves Adeledji in twain in front of everyone’s eyes. The blood sprays hot onto Ilberd’s boots, Aster’s face. People scream. People scream _so loudly._

And the Scions run.

As prey does.

Yda and Papalymo stay back to hold the bloodhounds at bay. He doesn’t see what happens, he can’t see, but he feels the limit break in his bones. Ul’dah trembles to her foundations. Thancred vanishes them into the shadows, but the shadows have eyes and ears in a city like Ul’dah. Foul water splashes against their shins as they flee through the darkness; the smell claws its way into his brain. His vision flashes and goes, flashes and goes, flashes red red red and the world spirals out of control.

He –

Light.

– missteps. Bloodstained hands in sewage water, this is how he washes away the sin. The remains of his manacles scrape his skin raw.

Y’shtola hauls him back up, her slim hands so urgent.

“Come on!” she hisses. Minfilia is panting further ahead and Thancred utterly silent, laid blank like the gleam of a knife. Trying to look for them just distorts reality further.

There’s no time. He is holding everyone up. They need to run. He survives.

He croaks something approaching an _I’m fine._ He’s fine. No one has the time to ask, and he’s fine.

_He is fine._

But Y’shtola more than any of the Scions knows healing; from so close she cannot miss it. Her breath is sharp, then he barely feels the press of her hand against the side of his face.

“Oh Aster…” he hears her sigh.

And that’s all she says. That she will ever say.

Sounds and images jump across the space. Wall to wall to floor to wall to everywhere inbetween. Light and echoes. Echoes.

The Braves are so close, closer every heartbeat. Minfilia’s hitched gasping. The smell of feces, the mold on the stones. His skin crawling and cold. They need to _run._ Y’shtola wore parfume to the banquet, something light and flowery. It tangles with the sewage, all he understands is rot. Thancred’s voice through the darkness – “We _cannot linger –_ ”

Fragments and distortions that have no connections, shards of the world spinning in emptiness. He vomits onto Y’shtola’s pretty dress.

Her hand over his skin. The light way her spell sinks into his flesh, spring breeze and mountain spring cool in his veins. The sheer _precision_ of it as they run and stumble through the underground, too slow too slow, washing away into the contusions across his ribs. More precision than he ever could achieve with his own healing – he remembers that, stupidly, her gentleness and the marvel of her skill. Her heal lingers long after.

The chase ends with an arrow whistling past his ear.

Only minutes later, the tunnel collapses on top of the Archons. The groaning of the earth deafens him.

He hears her sigh in the darkness.

He keeps hearing it – in the Triad Control, in Rhalgr’s Reach, on the Steppe and the crystal sands of the Burn. Ghimlyt –

In Gridania.

He’s composed again when she wakes up for the first time since she was lost in teleport. Her room is small and private and smells of wood dust, some kind of herb incense tickles in his nose. He blinks against his drowsiness, swallows the taste of chocolate he did not drink. But the evening is warm, the room is cozy – is _safe_ , and the light falls softly through the window on the two sisters.

Y’mhitra looks exhausted with worry, but while her eyes are red her cheeks are already dry again. Now it’s their turn to welcome the Scion back to the living. Tataru has no qualms to cry her soul out with relief, her head is buried in the fabric of Y’shtola’s warming leggings. Aster barely notices the miqo’te’s wry smile or tired voice or the way she soothes Tataru with clumsy petting.

He just hears her sigh.

And if he’d been just a little less slow, just a little more steady on his feet, just a little less _useless_ and just a _little_ better –

But he wasn’t. He’s not.

He manages a smile when Y’shtola greets them. Alphinaud’s grown she remarks. Her eyes don’t track movements.

They could’ve escaped. If he hadn’t been so distracting. They could’ve … could’ve lived. Everyone could’ve survived if he hadn’t so fundamentally ( _We won’t we won’t we will not now –_ ) fucked up everything.

He bites at his cheek and hides his hands behind his back. He wants to strangle himself, because he clearly needs that lesson again. He’s not wearing gloves, so at least nothing creaks when he clenches his fists hard enough to draw blood from his palms. It’s a compromise. He’s composed. He is _calm._ He can't allow himself to … refuses to dwell, because he has enough of being _deficient –_

Y’shtola looks at him.

He hears her sigh _Oh Aster_ and the side of his face throbs, his vision swims and explodes into nonsense for a second. He winces at the painful flash.

He looks back at her, and she is not fine. Not nearly as fine as she pretends, even beyond the exhaustion of her ordeal. He doesn’t know what exactly is wrong, only that something _is_ – her bright green eyes have faded into white blindness.

But she doesn’t say anything.

And … he cannot fault her for this. She doesn’t say anything about him, either. Doesn’t ask, doesn’t scold. Just looks almost at his face. So he keeps his silence, as she does hers; it is the only gratitude he can offer her.

At dusk, the Steel Vigil towers silent.

He kneels in front of the stone engraved with the Lover’s twin moons. He has no words in his heart to speak.

Coerthas is different than Thanalan – everything smells so clean. Crisp. The snow dampens all sound and buries all flowers; in time even the lilies he brought with him will wither and freeze. He aches, still, from the bitter cold. He always has. He thinks he always will.

But when he first set foot in these lands, this bitter cold settled in well-whittled rifts. Crept through his blood and his bones. In the wake of bloodbath and murder, he didn’t know anything – didn’t know what to do, how to continue, how to _stop._ And Coerthas is harsh. Unforgiving. Full of frost and dragon fire – the nation of a people that have forgotten what peace feels like.

But here, in this arctic hell, he found the warmth of genuine kindness.

Salvation.

Coerthas is the landscape of his soul. He doesn’t feel _home_ here, but he could.

He could’ve. In time.

He scrapes with a fingernail at the snow stuck on the … the stone. Icy flakes float down to settle on his bouquet.

He wants to keep it, this warmth. He wants to –

Wants to have it _back._

The stone reads Haurchefant’s name.

It lists his station, his house and his credentials, the date of his birth. The date of his death.

Aster scrapes his fingertips bloody on it.

He _wants_ to have Haurchefant _back_.

Wants to have his smile. His teasing. Even his weird comments.

The joy he kept in his voice for others’ sakes. The loyalty and love he held for his men, his home. The way he looked at Aster and saw a person before seeing a _useful_ – … a useful person.

Snowflakes alight on his skin. He kneels in the cold and he is calm. He. Is. Calm.

And Haurchefant is dead.

But he wants to –

He wants to have his hot chocolate recipe and to be asked again how his travels treated him. Wants to see him talk with his entire body again, to finally answer all his gestures in kind. Wants to – wants to _know_ that he can always say no. Wants to teach him Triple Triad. Wants to ask him how to care for a black chocobo and listen to Haurchefant’s spirited instructions, even if both of them already know perfectly well how to care for a chocobo. The chocobo is not even _important._

Air carves its icy way into his chest. Fast. Faster.

Window after window and lamp after lamp, the city in the distance lights up with the falling night. From out here, it still looks untouchable.

So cold and unfriendly, but Haurchefant more than anything made it _welcoming._ All of Ishgard’s warmth started with him.

But a knight lives to serve and save and _–_

Aster slumps forward against the cold stone. Ice cracks against his forehead and he’s insensate to it.

Someone thought it _fitting_ to put a profound quote about _nobility_ on the grave.

His throat burns. His insides ache.

_Nobility._

As if –

He’s clawing at the snow near its base. Cannot stop breathing like he wants to, cannot keep his lungs still. He has no words for his voice, no laments to wail. Can’t even sob, can’t even _mourn_ properly because what does he have to mourn about? What right does he have?! What does the coward who couldn’t bear to– couldn’t even _touch_ –

The bouquet of nymeia-lilies is already wilting.

All he can do is wheeze harshly while the craving tears apart his insides. How pathetic that this is the the closest thing he manages to crying.

* * *

Salt dries on his cheeks. He wakes in pieces and splinters; the mind wakes last.

The world is slow.

His eyes sting in the frigid wind … but snowdrifts fade into desert dunes. His throat burns and insides ache. Even now the Echo whispers and whispers – sleep clings heavily to him.

Heat caresses his spine and limbs, sand crusts in the cracks of his singed armour. The back of his other self is warm. Footsteps sink heavy into the sand as the other carries the Warrior to… he cannot remember. Their heart beats slow and quiet. The Sagolii Desert embraces them and he gasps sharply before he can swallow the fear.

The footsteps stop abruptly.

Sand tumbles into the valley between the dunes from their still weight. The air shimmers and warps. Everything is bright and hot and his grip is strangling his other self but they’re still breathing. Still breathing. Still –

His head is bowed, hair falls into his eyes. The Echo rings loud in the silence, screaming out all the untold sins.

“Forgive me.” his future self begs, his voice low and faint. Myste’s voice.

The Warrior swallows. The sun blazes all around them.

“We already did that.” He loosens his grip, runs a hand through the other’s hair. It tangles in his fingers. “Didn’t we?”

Didn’t they?

Sweat-soaked hair slips through his fingers and he scratches at the other’s scalp. A shudder at the soothing memory, the double-sense, to swallow it down – because it’s gone and he won’t indulge. Won’t. Ducks his face, instead, against his future’s neck and waits with closed eyes. Waits. Waits. They did … didn’t they?

The Warrior nods, short and sharp.

They did.

But maybe some things take longer to nurture.

Out of the heat-shimmer grows the glow of sanctuary. Forgotten Springs is hidden in the shifting sands until it is not, and the toneless melody of its aetheryte calls out to them long before their footsteps cross over into the shadow of the oasis’s gardens. A dry breeze blows dust down their parched throats. From the other end of the settlement the hunters of the U tribe drag the carcass of a giant sandworm into the townsquare, hollering and laughing at their kill. They pay little attention to the pair of travellers.

Still, they will need to make their presence known to the nunh.

With barely a grumble, the Warrior untangles himself. One stays leaning against the trunk of a palm tree, the other slinks along the outskirts of the throng of excited tribeswomen. The interior of the nunh’s little office-home is of a soothing coolness against the outside sun. It settles like a salve on his sunburnt skin.

“Warriorrr of Light!” U’odh Nunh greets jovially. “’Tis an honorrr to welcome you back to Forrrgotten Springs. What brrrings you to the U?”

The Warrior blinks at the grizzled miqo’te. But he declines to bow in turn, and the nunh’s eyes narrow. In the back, the U’s two tias squabble over the allocation of the freshly hunted meat and skins.

“U’odh Nunh.” he croaks belatedly.

The nunh rumbles and it takes another long moment to recognize the purr as concern. He wants to sigh.

“You’rrre wounded.” the man observes shrewdly. “What prrrey, I wonderrr, could trrrouble a skilled hunterrr like you?”

Of course one of the Company of Heroes would notice.

The nunh stands with a flick of his tail and the soft silken garments he wears – mark of his station and indulgence both – rustle, too loudly, over all the outside commotion, shift over the body of a veteran warrior. But silk is a deceptively strong material; it carries a myriad different enchantments well. U’odh Nunh steps closer with a prowl that should not feel as threatening as it does. It didn’t ever before.

The Warrior flexes his hands, but stays on his spot.

He holds that sharp gaze and says, bluntly, “Ifrit.”

The nunh stops in his tracks.

The tias’ squabbling shuts up.

U’odh Nunh breathes sharply in the stifling silence. His ears press flat against his skull.

“We were not inforrrmed of the dangerrr.” he says.

And they couldn’t have been. Ifrit was not a danger for very long at all.

The nunh’s eyes are searching. He can see the thoughts behind them forming the only possible conclusion.

Eikon-slayer.

With a nod, the Warrior confirms: “Ifrit’s dead.”

Ifrit is not dead.

You cannot kill that which is eternal.

But the Warrior knows that, for a given practicality, the primal is gone and its danger is passed. For now.

He knows it will escalate, it will _all_ escalate and Arenvald – he’s seen Arenvald, he’s so young. So young _still_. There is no way he can entrust the task of keeping the Amalj’aa zealots’ attention to the boy and expect him to do anything but be killed. Arenvald freezes in terror at the mere thought of combat; it will be months yet before he doesn’t remember, with every flash of weapon steel, his best friends being murdered in front of him. He _would_ die to Ifrit, if the Warrior were to foist that duty off on him. The Warrior does not like that thought.

He – they will deal with the Flamefangs. And the summonings. The crystal thefts and caravan abductions. In time. He did before.

For now, the Lord of the Inferno is dead and gone and the Warrior desperately wants to sleep.

Exhaustion grinds his awareness down. He realizes he missed most of the words spoken just now.

U’odh Nunh’s relieved smile fades. His piercing eyes flicker to the gash in the Warrior’s leg, concerned.

“But, come. Sit. Avail yourrrself of ourrr hospitality.” the man says, and his tail flicks in agitation. He’s wondering how the Warrior is even standing – it’s written all over his scarred face.

The Warrior shakes his head. Points over his shoulder back to outside.

“May we –“ he begins and then grimaces.

Oh.

“We?” the nunh inquires into the silence.

Well. Nothing for it.

He turns and strides outside; the force of the sun feels like an almost physical blow after the sheltering office. The nunh follows curiously. But he makes no further attempt to get him to sit and rest. The Warrior appreciates that.

The world looks bleached out with sunlight. No one seems to notice.

“How did Ifrrit manage to wound you so?” U’odh Nunh wonders.

The Warrior breathes, distracted, and his entire leg throbs at the flash of memory. Because –

He’s done this before. He’s done this before so many times, so often, and he knows what the primal will do, when it will do it – and he is so sure. He is so sure he doesn’t pay _attention_ and then, suddenly, he hears his own voice scream from across the embers. In fear.

Because between one second and the next he’s on the burning ground, axe clattering away through the dirt, and looking up as a flame-lit claw descends on him –

“Overconfidence.” he dismisses.

The nunh hums. The Warrior cannot detect any judgement.

He sways as the first whispers of the Echo return. A couple of steps more, and they’re in the shade of the palm trees again. The Warrior waiting there squints sleepily at them, pushes off the trunk of the tree and greets “U’odh Nunh.”

“Ah.” says the miqo’te, at a loss for words.

The Warrior shares a look. Their headache swells, slowly and surely.

“We won’t stay long.” the Warrior assures U’odh Nunh. “But may we take some time in your waters?”

The water of the oasis is not exactly cool. Nothing can be truly cool in the Sagolii if not made so with magic.

But it’s enough that they can wash away the sand and sweat and soot and blood. With an easy gesture one beckons the other to the side of the pond. Rocks and a curtain of vegetation shield them from the rest of the bathing space, thankfully. U’odh Nunh was gracious to grant them this privacy.

They just want to sleep for a bit, heal for a bit, before they carry on to Natalan. To the Howling Eye and the Navel and the caverns under Cartenau. Damage control.

The Warrior closes his eyes and listens.

Wind rustles through the palm trees, as dry and raspy as their throat.

The water murmurs gently, quietly. Drops of it rise for a healing spell on their request. The other’s hand moves slowly over the careless wound, and white magic soothes the heat of inflammation down for a while. He sinks lower into the water. He’s tired. Was he this tired the last time, too? He doesn’t remember.

Beyond this quiet corner, the village is bustling. Laughter. Cheerful shouts. The U will feast tonight.

He reaches out with one hand, palm open, movement lethargic. Skin to skin he listens to their breath, feels the echo of their heartbeat against his fingers –

They smile wrily. Somewhere in the settlement a huntress of the U begins to sing, and her voice picks up others, more and more and before long Aster falls asleep to their cheerful chorus.

* * *

A choir of thousand year old lamentations.

Prayers.

Halone the Fury carved out an ice palast with Her three spears, one for each mortal sin. In Her halls the pious feast on snowmelt wine and ice fills the wounds that killed them – makes new limbs and makes new people, remakes lives so that they might return to the battlefields of the afterworld in Her name. It settles into well-broken fractures. Ice is the element of strength. Of protection.

The Soul of the Dragoon hums with air, instead.

To soar as a dragon, to fight as a dragon, to think as a dragon, to have fangs as a dragon does and claws as a dragon does –

But Estinien lost his humanity.

He clung to it, with all his might and tenacity.

And he _lost._

There is nothing of him in the creature baring his fangs at the Warrior, aether cracks in his skin and abominable eyes twitching in his limbs. He can hear the squelch of their incompletely fusioned flesh from forty paces away. The eyes move and shudder; the dragon’s gaze is too furious to settle on any one thing.

All of it.

_All of it he will destroy._

All the Warrior can hear is the hymn to destruction. Irresistible. Smothering. The Dragonsong calls to him, calls to –

Destroy. Break and shatter. Then wait. Let them lick their wounds, foster their despair. Return and do it all over again. Again. Again. A thousand years and a thousand years more. Again. Again. _Again_. Evermore. Fire and ash and blood, with neither cease nor sense; death for sins so grave they cannot ever die. A lullaby to last the ages.

And he cannot move and cannot scream, cannot hear beyond the bitter chorus _again and **again**_. Can barely imagine – enduring or… or surviving –

He can hear the growl rattling out of Estinien’s lungs, though. Flames lick at Estinien’s sharpened teeth. Nidhogg snarls and snaps and raises Estinien’s lance with Estinien’s hands, in Estinien’s body twisted to fit his never-dying shade of carnage.

But the wyrm that stole his friend _lost, too_.

And the Warrior of Light stands – battered and bloodied and burned. But unbowed. Victorious. As if everything about any of this moment weren’t, in fact, violating.

Adrenaline shivers in his limbs, but his hands are _steady_ on these steps that test faith and fear.

The dragon has neither of those. Only rancor: Nidhogg is fire, not heat. He _burns_ _and burns it all again_ to ash and cinders, and the soot he leaves behind in his vengeful justice is wet. Cold.

Then Estinien _snarls –_ “ _This is **not your hand** , wyrm_!”

Body and mind separate, the Azure Dragoon lets go of his lance. The spear that commited mortal sins.

The Dragonsong beats at the Warrior’s temples, screams into his thoughts. Demands he submit, demands he kill and kill and _kill_ , and he is lost in the fury of loss. The clatter as the bloodied steel falls onto these frozen steps chases all sound else away. He breathes. He breathes. He breathes.

It’s over. It’s –

Then Estinien makes Estinien’s hand crush Estinien’s windpipe.

And the Warrior is –

is –

Aster cannot move. Cannot move and cannot scream –

Alphinaud screams “ _Estinien!_ ” over the charred battlefield. The Warrior jolts back into his body at the thrill of unexpected alarm.

Where did Alphinaud come from? He was supposed to be at Vidofnir’s side! He’s not. No. No, no, nonono, _no_! The entire bridge may be a warzone, but Nidhogg is not vanquished, Aster _failed_ , and Alphinaud – he could die here, could die so easily and the Song is _so loud_ –

But the boy looks at him, so calm and sure. His expression is tight, his lips pressed thinly in sheer, audacious determination. And Aster remembers.

Estinien’s body coughs, the small, choked sound of strangulation, and –

The Warrior nods. Lets go of his own spear, the lance that commited mortal sins. And then they run.

Estinien crushes his own windpipe and Nidhogg roars at the indignity, the _denial of his rightful justice, submit succumb **surrender and die** – _and Alphinaud swore. He _swore_ to save Estinien, as Aster didn’t save Haurchefant, or Isayle. And Aster follows him: for those in need, for those he can yet save he _will not_ forsake Estinien –

Estinien’s body convulses. The dragon screams at his slave and the dragoon howls his denial back.

“Kill me!” he screams at them. _Pleads_. “You need to kill me!”

Because to kill the body is to kill the soul, _any_ soul in it –

 _Kill kill **kill!** _the Dragonsong crescendoes.

“No! You can’t die! I won’t let you!” Alphinaud yells.

The Warrior grips at the infected flesh around one of Nidhogg’s eyes, tries to rip it out. He can feel its sick twitching as the dragon’s gaze _refocuses_ and –

he –

_burns._

His every cell. Every particle of life inside. Every single trace of aether around their bodies flares ablaze _._ Oceans shall evaporate under the ardor of the black wyrm’s wrath. His immortal, _incandescent_ fury.

Ash and cinders. Fire roars like dragons do. Wreckage and ruin and so much _sound_ and _noise_ and _song._

He cannot _breathe._

And Alphinaud screams and screams from the agony and the cold fire, from Nidhogg’s rage tearing into their flesh –

The Warrior does not let go.

“You’re wasting your time!” Estinien cries, voice full of blood. “Kill me, kill me now while I have the beast subdued! _Please!”_

Nidhogg and his Dragonsong howl in his soul, bloodthirst and vengeance and _grief,_ deafens him to anything else but this. This moment, these words, this terror. And all Aster wants to do is say, snarl, shout –

_No! Don’t make me do this!_

_Kill kill kill kill “ **Kill me please!** ”_

(But I have killed. I have killed so much, so many, so often – I’ve lost count. I’ve lost count.

Enemies. Soldiers and bandits and beasts and beastmen. Dragons. Primals. People. But you _know_ me, Estinien. You know me and my duty and you _still –_ you still… You’re my friend. You’re the first to tell my betters that this duty will kill me. That I should have a _choice –_

So. Please. Don’t ask me to kill you, don’t pleaseplease don’t –)

_Pathetic_ , says Zenos.

– !

“Don’t go –

* * *

– there.”

The Warrior breathes sharply in.

The communion ends, abrupt as the slash of decapitation.

Whisps of memory ( _persimmons scattering on a dusty road, the fullmoon above the Wall_ ) still cling to their fingertips, slow to fade in the little space between their two bodies. The Echo yowls before it falls silent.

The world refirms. Colour trickles back into reality.

The green shade of the palm trees. Gurgling of a desert brook, the gentle lapping of the pond’s waves against their red-burnt skin. The air is warm and the horizon warps ever so slightly out in the sand sea. The glare of the sun and the tingle of roughshod conjury holding his thigh muscle together. The water glows with it, a soft turquoise.

Out of the blur his future crystallizes first into sharpness. Their heads throb with the heartbeat of the past.

_Don’t go there._

He breathes. The other breathes. Their hands are _steady_ , and they’re very good at lying to themselves.

It’s faint. Nowhere _near_ the severity of the scar that nearly bisected Y’shtola. But in the shade and against the brightness of the sun overhead, the scar that Zenos left behind on them in the Reach looks an angry, unfading red.

The breath catches in his throat. His hand clenches into a trembling fist against the other’s breastbone.

Not both of them.

Only one body has that scar.

The Warrior swallows and looks down at his leg. The water is a little pink, still, but the Regen did its work while they slept. That will be a scar too, and it doesn’t matter that the wound was gained through carelessness and arrogance. He never got it before.

It’s a difference between them.

What a great start to their quest to save the planet.

He looks back up and into the very quiet face of the other Warrior.

“I won’t go there now.” he promises, half because the echo of that encounter sets his every nerve alive with uneasiness, and he’s had enough of memories for one day. But the promise still calms him, calms the other, and that’s what counts. Fear only paralyzes them, and for this to work they cannot afford to wallow in the past beyond the necessity of it.

The Warrior nods.

Gently he pushes the fist back down into the water, before he stands up to go wash their dusty clothes.

Aster sinks back into the shallows, and curls that hand around the edges of his wound. It stings, but he breathes through the pain; he remembers how to with much more ease than before. The water starts to glow again as he uses its aether to weave another Regen spell. He closes his eyes and tries to sleep for real, for now.

* * *

Dreams are a reflection of reality. An abstraction of the experienced, nothing more than the labour of the mind to settle and soothe the damages of the waking world. They are fantastical and outlandish and impossible. They are precise and vague, metaphorical and literal, monotone and colourful, everchanging and still. They are endless and end in the blink of an eye. And while one lays immobile, gripped by the cold hands of slumber deep, the past unfolds on the canvas of memory like a nightbloom unfolding in the sacred darkness. The terrifying darkness.

The world is not a kind place. Not a gentle place.

Dreams do not forget.

In the depths, the shadow speaks:

* * *

_And a heartbeat without harmony is moonlight without dark. The heart seeketh equilibrium, with balance will your worry part. So still this broken melody, and therewith shoulder thee: one last step –_


End file.
